In his Late Summer Issue column, Klaus Laitenberger tells us about sowing autumn and winter salads, drying garlic and onions, growing the highbush cranberry and topping up mulch around trees and bushes.
August is a great time to sow autumn and winter salads. There is an excellent range of salads available. Hardy winter brassicas include mizuna, tatsoi, wild rocket and oriental mustards, such as ‘Red Frills’, ‘Green Frills’ and ‘Green Wave’. These tend to taste quite spicy.
There are also milder, non-brassica salads, like corn salad (also called lamb’s lettuce) and claytonia (also called winter purslane or miner’s lettuce). August and September are the best months for sowing. Seed can be sown directly into the roundabout 1cm deep, 7cm apart, with 15cm between rows.
Make one sowing in August for harvest from late October to December. A September sowing will be ready in February/March. Apart from weeding and watering during dry spells, there is nothing else to do. Slugs and snails are the only pest problem. If you place a bionet cloche over the crop, the success rate will be higher.
While all of those mentioned are hardy and will survive frosts, if you have a tunnel or greenhouse, wait until September before sowing seeds in modules (about five seeds per cell)and plant out in October, for harvest until the following April.
Top tips
Add a small handful of organic chicken manure pellets around kale and Brussels sprout plants
Remove yellowing lower leaves of kale, sprouts and cabbages. This improves air circulation through the crop and reduces the danger of woolly aphid.
Top up mulch around fruit trees and bushes. Wood chippings are the cheapest and best choice. Remember never to dig the wood chip mulch into the soil. Otherwise, it will rob nitrogen from the soil.
For these and lots more top tips and checks from Klaus Laitenberger for your garden read his column in our Late Summer Issue, or subscribe today.
